Donald Trump’s claim that he has absolute immunity for criminal acts taken in office as president is an insult to reason, an assault on common sense and a perversion of the fundamental maxim of American democracy: that no man is above the law.
More astonishing than the former president’s claim to immunity, however, is the fact that the Supreme Court took the case in the first place. It’s not just that there’s an obvious response — no, the president is not immune to criminal prosecution for illegal actions committed with the imprimatur of executive power, whether private or “official” (a distinction that does not exist in the Constitution) — but that the court has delayed, perhaps indefinitely, the former president’s reckoning with the criminal legal system of the United States.
In delaying the trial, the Supreme Court may well have denied the public its right to know whether a former president, now vying to be the next president, is guilty of trying to subvert the sacred process of presidential succession: the peaceful transfer of power from one faction to another that is the essence of representative democracy. It is a process so vital, and so precious, that its first occurrence — with the defeat of John Adams and the Federalists at the hands of Thomas Jefferson’s Republicans in the 1800 presidential election — was a second sort of American Revolution.
Whether motivated by sincere belief or partisanship or a myopic desire to weigh in on a case involving the former president, the Supreme Court has directly intervened in the 2024 presidential election in a way that deprives the electorate of critical information or gives it less time to grapple with what might happen in a federal courtroom. And if the trial occurs after an election in which Trump wins a second term and he is convicted, then the court will have teed the nation up for an acute constitutional crisis. A president, for the first time in the nation’s history, might try to pardon himself for his own criminal behavior.
If they rule in his favor, prepare for King Trump. The more I think about it, the more I worry.
Any kind of partial immunity would likely be the death knell for the cases he’s involved in.
If he is immune from prosecution for “official acts”, regardless of the actual intent or motive behind them, then the GA case is basically out the window. Contacting another governing body and ‘ensuring the results of the election were fair’ would most likely qualify as official duties which would make him immune from prosecution even if his actions and motives were criminal.
Similar things could easily happen in DC. He could say he declassified the documents as an official act. You and I both know he didn’t, but if the action is classified as an “official act”, it may not be reviewable. And if the law sees Trump’s mental declassification as an “official act”, the rest of the case goes away because the Mar-a-lago documents would therefore not be classified.
And we all know that Cannon is waiting for an excuse to dismiss the Florida case. She’s stated as much. She’s most likely going to rule that everything he’s accused of falls under “official acts” and is therefore not prosecutable and dismiss the case.
Having virtually all of the cases dismissed would likely send his polling numbers soaring and energize his base. And if he gets a 2nd term with what is essentially a blueprint of what he is and isn’t allowed to do endorsed by the Supreme Court, he’s going to abuse the shit out of that until he establishes authoritarian rule and purges/jails his enemies.
An “official act” cannot be simply anything a President does. It should be either enumerated directly in the Constitution (like the pardon power, or the right to make cabinet and judicial appointments), or an authority given to the Executive through legislation.
There is no role for the President in the electoral process at all. The Constitution offers him no role at all. He is not responsible for ensuring elections are fair, the elections officials in the different states are. I see no possible way that provisioning alternate electors, which were not the ones that were ratified by the States, could possibly be within his official duties.
You are talking like a ratioinal, educated human being. The problem is that we are not dealing with rational human beings.
We are dealing with a man who has openly said he wants to establish authoritarian rule, a political party cheering him on, and multiple federal judges who are eagerly paving the way for him.
As you said, the term isn’t specified in the Constitution. Which means that, in reality, the term “official act” means whatever the hell the Supreme Court wants it to mean. If the Supreme Court wants to say that the phone call to Brad Raffensperger was an “official act” because it was a phone call to another government official, they can. If the Supreme Court wants to say “President Trump packed the documents from the White House and sent them for storage at Mar-A-Lago while he was still technically president, therefore it’s an official act”, they can. If the Supreme Court says that having Hunter Biden jailed right before the election is an official act because he’s under federal investigation, they can. You may not agree with it, but there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it either.
And just because there’s no official role for the President in the Constitution, that has never stopped the Supreme Court from just making something up. Heck, the broad powers that they exercise now only exist because the Supreme Court themselves made it up out of the blue and nobody bothered to stop them. If they want to say that the President “overseeing” the election process and “ensuring its fairness” is one of his official duties, they can. There’s nothing stopping them.
And even if there was, they’re all but untouchable. They can basically just say “we’re doing it anyway because fuck you that’s why”. The only way it would be overturned would be if Congress takes direct action (hahahahahahahahaha) or if they were to impeach and remove the judges that voted for it (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA). Remember, these aren’t normal people. These are people who are literally above the law and are now beginning to leverage that to their benefit to further entrench their rule.
I hate how right you are.